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I. Variety
There is sameness in differentness
and difference in sameness,
thus all things are born
to live as variously as possible,
thus all things are made
to be related.
Having encountered worlds within worlds
and guided them into the still
currents of Being,
I follow now the tumult of rivers,
thunderstruck by the serenity
of canyon walls
and the quick certain movements
of birds and fish
leading me into that cauldron
of eternal novelty
where a golden cloud
surrounding the world
follows overhead,
and all the new colors and sounds
leap forward
on wings of desire,
to take me
to the hinterlands of understanding,
Into the mind of newborn music
where I may dwell long enough
to taste the infinite ways
of its becoming.
II. Exploration
In newness there is oldness
and in oldness there is newness,
thus we do explore in all directions,
thus we search in time and place.
I have walked with unlikely caravans
and journied
into the penumbras of darkness,
I have danced once or twice
on the tongues of the sun
and drifted lightly
through the rainbow’s
careful unfolding.
Comets have been
my occasional companions,
and as a youth
I loved gazing at lakes
hovering above the mountaintops
and clouds hovering below them.
Too many times I have failed
to take the path untaken,
too many times the compass
has whirled me onto a stage
without actors.
But when summonses came
from faraway places
I embraced at once
those haunted voices
whispering lyrics
as urgent as thunder
as ancient as rain
telling me
I have come too far
and given
much too much
to cease my explorations.
III. Reflection
Within reflection there is revelation
and in revelation there is reflection,
thus we live and learn
in the prisms of our own making
thus we discover ourselves
in an unknown land
where a hall of mirrors
awaits us.
All the stories I have told
and retold,
all the traumas of waking and sleeping
now mix and reverberate
and seek to be washed away
in the quiet mouth of the river
where at last I am free
from the merciless charms
of the torrent.
Now I float
between heaven and sea
bearing witness
to a strange romance:
the sky and the ocean are old lovers
forever looking at each other
in each other’s mirrors,
forever mingling in uninhabited
latitudes and meridians,
forever singing to each other
in shades of blue.
Let them carry me
to their marriage bed
where I may lie down
and feel their boundless passion
bring forth new life.
IV. Seeds In the Heart of Everything
With every beginning
there is an end
and with every end a beginning,
thus we recite our words
in sequence,
thus we end our songs
as we began them.
Having learned in places
far from universities
that our planet is a seed
I return now to those
mysterious tributaries
where fertility and imagination
rule,
where the drama is written
anew every day
and things that live in the sunlight
want to fly.
I will dig my toes
into the mud
and become a cornstalk
or a sunflower.
I will play sly tricks on madness.
Leaves of grass
will be my accomplices
and usher me
into the heart of chaos,
the place where countless creatures
yet undreamed
are waiting to be fed,
the place where civilizations
made of light
are waiting to be born.
V. Adrift In A Sea of Unknown Familiars
In familiarity there is strangeness
and in strangeness familiarity,
thus we become acquainted
with what we cannot see,
thus the unknown winks at us
throughout the day.
Once having seen all the tapestries
and building blocks
and beckoned rare colors
from the Four Quarters,
now only the ancient has meaning,
as all novelty is but oblivion
and returns to what it was
or might have been.
I want to dance
with the sacred confusion
and with it
make something splendid
something our grandmothers
might have admired
something our ancestors
would have engraved
on the face of a shield
or a block of wood
above the doorway,
something returned from the dead
to be alive as never before,
bearing gifts and wonders
carried on magenta barges
drifting silently
along the fog-encrusted banks
of a river circling itself,
where the words of poems long-forgotten
fall like raindrops
into the current
and become the sea,
become another time and place,
the scene of rearrangements
more astounding
than a colony of geese
performing Much Ado About Nothing.
Let them take a bow
while the cosmos applauds
with novas
nebulas
big bangs
red giants
and dazzling spirals,
all the fireworks
we knew were there
when we gazed up
into the darkness
and beheld an endless garden
of unearthly delights
waiting to be cultivated
by gardeners
who might be ourselves.
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